Anyone remember the E-rate? Part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (the same legislation that gave us the Communications Decency Act, telecom "deregulation" that was anything but, V-chips, and other such goodies), it was supposed to allow schools and libraries to get better Internet access. How's that been working out?
My guess is that this initiative, should Obama get it enacted, will help pad the bottom lines of the current broadband monopolists (hey! Now they get their own government bailout!), but will have little effect otherwise.
The free version pops up a "notifier" window when it updates, which is an ad for their paid software. Of course, given that they want you to give 'em money, you gotta expect that.
Agreed. I've been using it about that long as well, having been introduced to it by my ex-wife, who learned about it from her friends in Finland (including the guy she's now married to). It's free, it works well, and I haven't had it "get in my way" the way McAfee sometimes would for some reason. I wouldn't spend another dime on McAfee at this point. Of course, I do have to contend with AntiVir's ad popup when it updates itself once a day, but oh well. Recommended.
A few years ago, I bought my first XM receiver for $30. The company then sent me another one--and it's a better one, too--for free, with a service commitment (which has long since passed). I've enjoyed it since then, and the merger has affected some of my presets, but not all, and the one I listen to the most (80's on 8) is pretty much the same as it was before.
If it goes down, I don't have anything good to replace it with. I can't afford an iPhone, nor can I afford the extra bite of an unlimited-data plan to stream music with. Besides, it would be nowhere near as convenient, as I couldn't leave it in the car as I can the XM radio; too expensive and too much temptation for thieves! (The XM radios are far less valuable, and they have the added bonus that they can be "bricked" by the company if they're reported stolen.) Use an iPod in the car? Same problem. (Worse, even; Apple might be able to remotely "brick" an iPhone, too, but couldn't do that with just a regular iPod.) I guess it would be back to either pre-burned CDs or the vast field of bullshit that is FM radio for me...
I will say that EVE is one of the single most complex games I have ever played. Learning to control it is a little like learning to fly a 747. But people DO learn how to fly 747s, and I did learn how to handle EVE.
Yes, it DOES help if you have friends who have been playing for awhile, and, in my case, I was able to get into a decent corporation quickly. Eventually, after some incidents with a war declaration against our alliance, a friend of mine (who'd joined at roughly the same time) and I split off and founded our own corp, and we've brought other people into the game ourselves (including my girlfriend, who's now an addict!).
At least one person has noticed this and has sent a letter to the GSA:
To whom it may concern,
Recently a new.gov domain name was registered. The name of this domain was http://www.change.gov./ This appears to be a violation of the Domain Naming Conventions Summary located at https://www.dotgov.gov/dnc.aspx. The domain does not appear to meet the criteria outlined on that page. It is my belief that the name was granted without the proper review, due to the current political climate and may in fact have been a political favor which is a clear violation of federal law.
What is the process to file a complaint regarding improper use of the.gov TLD?
Thank you for your time and cooperation.
This may or may not have any result whatsoever. We shall see.
Nah. We'll take care of it. Lexx's Hulk will reduce that 'roid to raw ore in no time (Strip Miner IIs will do that), and my fully-rigged Iteron V will get the ore to the nearest station for refining. Meanwhile, Selena can ride shotgun in her Myrmidon, blasters and railguns ready in case the rats show up. Keep an eye out for can-tippers...
Well, in Portal, if an object that has an open portal on it moves, the portal disappears, and the "other end" of the portal is blocked. Hence tricky puzzles like the one in Test Chamber 18 to reach the storage cube. That one was a cast-iron bitch to figure out the first time. (Not going to give it away for the six people who've never played Portal...)
Herewith, my own RSS feeds list. I have a few categories of stuff I keep up on on a regular basis;
this listing includes only (mostly) blogs that are posting regularly.
Second Life Blogs - Blogs about the Second Life virtual world. Usually I list these by avatar name.
The Lexx's Second Life - Alexzandria Aeon ("Lexx")
is my "SL daughter" and a businesswoman.
Jacek Antonelli - An artist and commentator on
various aspects of the world.
Hamlet Au - New World Notes - The "big dog" in Second
Life blogging. Hamlet Au used to work for Linden Lab, and wrote a book, The Making of Second Life.
life|cubed - One of my friends, "Padre" Triste Bertrand, who
is also a minister in RL.
Torley Lives - Everybody in Second Life should know
Torley Linden. Torley is unique, helpful, and watermelon-flavored.
An Engine Fit For My Proceeding - Ordinal
Malaprop is SL's own version of Ada Lovelace...a fine Victorian lady and a top-flight scripter.
Massively (Second Life) - The latest
news and information about Second Life. (Massively.com also covers other virtual worlds and MMOs.)
Second Thoughts - Prokofy
Neva is perhaps the most-hated person in SL, and is sort of the "official gadfly." He's well worth reading
for an alternate perspective, though.
Dwell On It - Tateru Nino is one of
the smartest people I know. Her writing is part of what got me into SL in the first place.
MeraTalk - Mera Pixel is insightful, witty, and very
purple.
Second Life Grid Status Reports - When there are
problems with SL--an all-too-often occurrence these days, alas--Linden Lab posts here.
Political Blogs - This is stuff with a right-wing bent, and is the section that will probably be
most responsible for this post being modded down.:-/
The Smallest Minority - Kevin Baker is
partly a gunblogger, partly an excellent commentator. He's had good posts recently about education.
La Shawn Barber's Corner - A Christian blogger who
only dabbles in politics these days, spending more time writing about music and digital technology.
Leslie Carbone - A Virginia
political blogger who I found via Twitter.
Personal Effects - Connie du Toit is one
of the clearest-minded writers you'll find on many subjects.
Geopoliticus - Kim du Toit (yes, he and
Connie are married) is the L33t Master of Firearms, and an insightfu
Actually, John Scalzi's The Android's Dream examined this question, in the recounting of a rabbinical debate over whether "Kingston's Bison Boar" (a genetically-engineered vatted meat product) was kosher. One of the animals the genes were taken from to make Bison Boar had cloven hooves, and one didn't, so they didn't know whether a hypothetical "real" Bison Boar would have cloven hooves or not. (They even looked at the company mascot for clues; it was no help, as it was depicted wearing boots.) Eventually, one rabbi pointed out that the Torah was silent on the subject of genetic engineering, so the question was not whether it was kosher or not, the question was, why were they arguing about it in the first place?
This particular tale actually turned out to have greater significance to the plot than you might think...
The Linden Dollar exchange rate has stayed steady because Linden Lab has been dumping new currency into the market to meet the demand, drawn "right out of the inkwell" and sold on the LindeX by "Supply Linden," their currency-trader account. It'll be interesting to look at next month's economic report (which details exactly how much L$ Supply Linden sold, among other things) and see whether the mass cash-outs by casino owners were able to meet more of the currency demand than LL.
I was using Ginko myself, primarily to assist in cashflow management. (As a club owner, I need to make payroll on a per-event basis, as well as prize money expenditures.) Needless to say, I've stopped that. My Ginko account has about L$450 in it, primarily interest on earlier deposits that have long since been withdrawn, and I'm pretty sure I won't see that money anytime soon.
Apez might be a better answer for the cashflow management, but my business partner has had trouble with them, too, in the past.
It is possible to get "socializing" experiences without being in a public school.
And it's also possible that, while in public school, your kids will be subjected to "socializing" behaviors that are not so desireable, such as bullying and peer pressure. Hell, modern-day high schools, more and more, are coming to resemble Lord of the Flies. If you don't want your kids in that environment, homeschooling is the way to go.
It seemed strange, especially since I'm told that bees in Finland aren't suffering from the same issue...and Finland has more cellphones than pretty much anyplace else on Earth.
It's still being worked on, and, in fact, there have been some recent developments that have moved this work forward significantly. See this entry by Babbage Linden on the Official Linden Blog from last month for more details. It involved finding a memory leak in the Mono runtime which would have caused memory usage in the simulator code to grow unacceptably over time. LL personnel like Babbage worked closely with Mono team members to resolve this.
For a counterbalancing opinion, make sure and read this post on Second Life Insider by Tateru Nino, SL Mentor, journalist, and all-around superwoman. Some excerpts:
In fact, as hype pieces go, this one is nonpareil. It takes the SL hype, and exaggerates it to a point not even the media believes, then compares it to outdated circumstances in a vague and unverifiable report allegedly (but apparently actually not) made when the Second Life economy was less than a tenth of its current size. Way to compare Buicks to boysenberries there, boys. Apples and oranges are virtual clones by comparison.
[...]
Some of it will certainly give you a laugh if you're familiar with Second Life's economic and exchange system as it stands. Further, if you read closely, you'll see nothing to suggest that Harrison has even ever logged into Second Life and experienced any of the things he is talking about. There's enough misconception in his opening paragraphs to suggest that he hasn't done so and that he hasn't any hard data to back it all up. In fact judging by the evasiveness used when reference to exchanges, it's even possible that there isn't any.
[...]
Best of all, Harrison claims to have done this study six months ago prompted by "given the fact SL was supposedly producing virtual millionaires." -- Of course there were no virtual millionaires in Second Life then -- Anshe [Chung]'s so very recently made the grade (Harrison takes the time to call Anshe a whore before he's done). Harrison's piece looks like just a manufactured controversy piece (or, perhaps, he is just very easily confused by numbers and simple economic matters).
Given their track record, Valleywag appears to have a very strong anti-SL bias, and that may have caused them to overreach here. Not that I'm claiming it's that easy to make money in SL--heaven knows I haven't figured out the trick yet--but the picture's not nearly as bleak as the ValleyWag people make out.
(The way to go to make money, as in RL, seems to be real estate. With the increasing population of SL, demand is high; one land management company I deal with is planning to bring 4 whole "sims," or a bit over 250,000 square meters, of new land online per month to try and meet the demand--and, when they preannounce a new sim, it's almost always sold out before it even comes online.)
Well, they don't give stipends to everyone anymore...just premium accounts. And they've reduced the size of the premium stipends, too.
There are other "sinks" in the economy as well. Uploading a texture or sound file costs L$10 and that money basically "disappears." Ditto with the fee for creating new user groups (L$100).
Linden Labs has actually found that, to help stabilize the exchange rate, they have to sell L$ on their currency market themselves. The exchange rate, after peaking at around L$330/US$1, now seems to have stabilized at L$275-280/US$1 for the present.
Slashdot Mirror
My guess is that this initiative, should Obama get it enacted, will help pad the bottom lines of the current broadband monopolists (hey! Now they get their own government bailout!), but will have little effect otherwise.
The free version pops up a "notifier" window when it updates, which is an ad for their paid software. Of course, given that they want you to give 'em money, you gotta expect that.
Agreed. I've been using it about that long as well, having been introduced to it by my ex-wife, who learned about it from her friends in Finland (including the guy she's now married to). It's free, it works well, and I haven't had it "get in my way" the way McAfee sometimes would for some reason. I wouldn't spend another dime on McAfee at this point. Of course, I do have to contend with AntiVir's ad popup when it updates itself once a day, but oh well. Recommended.
If it goes down, I don't have anything good to replace it with. I can't afford an iPhone, nor can I afford the extra bite of an unlimited-data plan to stream music with. Besides, it would be nowhere near as convenient, as I couldn't leave it in the car as I can the XM radio; too expensive and too much temptation for thieves! (The XM radios are far less valuable, and they have the added bonus that they can be "bricked" by the company if they're reported stolen.) Use an iPod in the car? Same problem. (Worse, even; Apple might be able to remotely "brick" an iPhone, too, but couldn't do that with just a regular iPod.) I guess it would be back to either pre-burned CDs or the vast field of bullshit that is FM radio for me...
That won't work! Haven't you heard that song by Loverboy? "Doo, doo, pig and mammoth DNA just won't splice!"
Yes, it DOES help if you have friends who have been playing for awhile, and, in my case, I was able to get into a decent corporation quickly. Eventually, after some incidents with a war declaration against our alliance, a friend of mine (who'd joined at roughly the same time) and I split off and founded our own corp, and we've brought other people into the game ourselves (including my girlfriend, who's now an addict!).
This may or may not have any result whatsoever. We shall see.
"The wind doth taste so bittersweet,
Like jasper wine and sugar,
It must have blown through someone's feet,
Like those of Caspar Weinberger."
Nah. We'll take care of it. Lexx's Hulk will reduce that 'roid to raw ore in no time (Strip Miner IIs will do that), and my fully-rigged Iteron V will get the ore to the nearest station for refining. Meanwhile, Selena can ride shotgun in her Myrmidon, blasters and railguns ready in case the rats show up. Keep an eye out for can-tippers...
Well, in Portal, if an object that has an open portal on it moves, the portal disappears, and the "other end" of the portal is blocked. Hence tricky puzzles like the one in Test Chamber 18 to reach the storage cube. That one was a cast-iron bitch to figure out the first time. (Not going to give it away for the six people who've never played Portal...)
I'm sure there'll be better jokes coming along soon. Have a Quafe while you wait for them.
I wrote something about this recently where I came to the same conclusion: The Coming Disneyfication of Second Life
And Hell freezes over. Don't believe it? Ask those flying pigs over there...
Second Life Blogs - Blogs about the Second Life virtual world. Usually I list these by avatar name.
Political Blogs - This is stuff with a right-wing bent, and is the section that will probably be most responsible for this post being modded down. :-/
You both are a bunch of steenkin' n00bs. Now get off my lawn. :-)
This particular tale actually turned out to have greater significance to the plot than you might think...
The Linden Dollar exchange rate has stayed steady because Linden Lab has been dumping new currency into the market to meet the demand, drawn "right out of the inkwell" and sold on the LindeX by "Supply Linden," their currency-trader account. It'll be interesting to look at next month's economic report (which details exactly how much L$ Supply Linden sold, among other things) and see whether the mass cash-outs by casino owners were able to meet more of the currency demand than LL.
Apez might be a better answer for the cashflow management, but my business partner has had trouble with them, too, in the past.
And it's also possible that, while in public school, your kids will be subjected to "socializing" behaviors that are not so desireable, such as bullying and peer pressure. Hell, modern-day high schools, more and more, are coming to resemble Lord of the Flies. If you don't want your kids in that environment, homeschooling is the way to go.
It seemed strange, especially since I'm told that bees in Finland aren't suffering from the same issue...and Finland has more cellphones than pretty much anyplace else on Earth.
Homeschool your kids, people.
- Do NOT, under any circumstances, upgrade an existing XP machine to Vista, even if it's Vista Supremo Premium Ultra-Capable.
- When you get a new computer, if it comes with Vista, that's when you'll upgrade.
- Do NOT buy a new computer just to get Vista, if your existing XP-based machine is working well enough.
Of course, Microsoft probably doesn't want me saying that...but screw 'em.It's still being worked on, and, in fact, there have been some recent developments that have moved this work forward significantly. See this entry by Babbage Linden on the Official Linden Blog from last month for more details. It involved finding a memory leak in the Mono runtime which would have caused memory usage in the simulator code to grow unacceptably over time. LL personnel like Babbage worked closely with Mono team members to resolve this.
(The way to go to make money, as in RL, seems to be real estate. With the increasing population of SL, demand is high; one land management company I deal with is planning to bring 4 whole "sims," or a bit over 250,000 square meters, of new land online per month to try and meet the demand--and, when they preannounce a new sim, it's almost always sold out before it even comes online.)
There are other "sinks" in the economy as well. Uploading a texture or sound file costs L$10 and that money basically "disappears." Ditto with the fee for creating new user groups (L$100).
Linden Labs has actually found that, to help stabilize the exchange rate, they have to sell L$ on their currency market themselves. The exchange rate, after peaking at around L$330/US$1, now seems to have stabilized at L$275-280/US$1 for the present.